00:00:07
NARRATOR: The forensics
pointed to an accidental death. But the circumstantial
evidence suggested
00:00:13
something more sinister. Was it possible that an alarm
clock, some laundry and a trash
00:00:21
bag could explain the mystery
of a young woman's death? [theme music] NARRATOR: The United
States Air Force
00:00:55
has the most
technologically advanced fighter jets in the world. As a mechanic, Staff
Sergeant Ron Gillette's job
00:01:02
was to keep those jets flying. He was good at it, too, and
worked at both the George Force
00:01:09
Base in California and the
Nellis Base in Las Vegas. MARK RENNER: He
was very competent.
00:01:16
He would not have gone on so
many temporary duty assignments to Nellis Air Force Base had he
not been very good at his job.
00:01:27
NARRATOR: Ron, his wife
Vicki, and their two children made their home in California
where they both grew up.
00:01:35
On August 28, 1984,
Ron returned home after running some errands. At first glance, it looked
like his wife was sleeping
00:01:45
in bed with their
three-year-old son. But when he looked closer, he
noticed she was unconscious.
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A plastic laundry bag
was close to her face. KELLY MAY0: said
that she passed out,
00:01:58
if you will, and lay on the bed,
and the bag fell on her face, and when he got there, her
face was covered with the bag
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and she suffocated. NARRATOR: When
paramedics arrived, they pronounced Vicki
dead at the scene.
00:02:11
She was 26 years old. KELLY MAY0: She was
lying on her side, and there was blood coming from
her mouth and her nose, which
00:02:19
indicated to us possibly
a drug overdose. Ron was there. Very distraught. Crying uncontrollably.
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Very upset. NARRATOR: Ron told investigators
that Vicki had some problems sleeping, so the night
before, at her request,
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he put four sleeping pills
into her mixed drink. It appeared that Vicki
lost consciousness
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while doing the
laundry and rolled over onto the
plastic laundry bag. On the kitchen
counter, investigators
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found a used glass
and an empty container of an over the counter sleep
medication in the trash.
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KEVIN POORMAN: We
then sent the drinks off that were found in the
house to the laboratory
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so that they could do testing
on it using a gas chromatograph, mass spectrometer,
to try to identify
00:03:11
the presence of
drugs in the drink. NARRATOR: And the only
drug that was found was the over the counter
sleep medication.
00:03:21
The autopsy didn't reveal much. -It was a typical
problematic case. You've got somebody who's
dead, and the autopsy
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doesn't really show very much. Very non-specific things. NARRATOR: The medical examiner
found some swelling in Vicki's
00:03:39
lungs, called pulmonary edema,
and a scrape on her upper lip. But there was no
evidence of asphyxiation.
00:03:49
The cause of Vicki's
death was officially ruled as undetermined. MARK RENNER: I think the
original autopsy listed cause
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of death unknown with the kind
of a question mark of liver disease or liver failure as a
potential contributing factor.
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NARRATOR: Ron's coworkers
corroborated his alibi that he was working on the
morning of his wife's death,
00:04:13
and investigators
were about to chalk this up to an
unfortunate accident. PAUL TAYLOR: She did not have
any drinking or drug problems,
00:04:22
and that she was a loving
mother to her two young children who, I believe, were ages
three and five at the time.
00:04:28
And there was no
evidence there to be gleaned that would
explain her death. NARRATOR: But Ron
Gillette, of all people,
00:04:41
wouldn't let the
investigation die. MARY SANCHEZ: we were
at the funeral house, Ron ran to the coffin
and fell on his knees
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and started crying and
screaming, saying, Vicki, why? Why did you do that to yourself
and to me and to my kids?
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NARRATOR: The medical
examiner ruled the cause of Vicki Gillette's
death as undetermined.
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Even to cynical
investigators, there was nothing to
indicate foul play. -So we had nothing.
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We had no murder weapon,
we had no motive, we had no evidence that a
murder had even been committed.
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NARRATOR: Toxicology tests
performed during Vicki's autopsy found sleeping
pills in her system,
00:05:30
and scientists estimated she
had consumed about 16 tablets, not the four Ron
told them about.
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But 16 tablets is a small
fraction of a fatal dose, and it was entirely
possible that Vicki
00:05:45
had taken the pills herself. Investigators did find
some suspicious items in the Gillette's apartment.
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First, there was an
alarm clock in the master bedroom set to 3:00 AM. And inside the plastic laundry
bag found next to Vicki's body
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were clothes, but not
the kind you'd expect. -I think there was
a shirt in there
00:06:10
that was still partially folded. And so I smelled the
clothes, and they had the distinct
smell of detergent.
00:06:18
These weren't old clothes.
This wasn't dirty laundry. -That created all sorts of
eyebrow raising on our part.
00:06:24
So now we had what we believed
was a staged crime scene. NARRATOR: Then a new
witness came forward
00:06:32
who saw something suspicious
on the morning Vicki died. PAUL TAYLOR: There was a
neighbor who saw Ron waiting
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on the steps for the
ambulance to arrive. When the ambulance showed
up, then he started crying.
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That was pretty compelling. NARRATOR: And if
that weren't enough, just 11 days after
Vicki's death,
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Ron Gillette was spotted at a
local rental car agency when he returned from a
trip to Las Vegas.
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KELLY MAY0: She said, you
know that guy whose wife died? He rented a car from me
not long after she died,
00:07:06
and he just brought
the car back. Attached to the rear
view mirror of the car was one of those
wedding decorations,
00:07:13
and attached to
his arm was a very attractive young Hispanic woman. They seemed very
close, very intimate.
00:07:19
NARRATOR: Investigators
literally couldn't believe it. So they called Ron
to check the story.
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-Ron said, yeah,
that's my new wife. He said, I just married her. She's a wonderful person.
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He said, well, you know,
my children-- he told me, my children really
need a mother.
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They just need the mother. They need someone
in their lives. MARY SANCHEZ: could
not believe it.
00:07:41
I was like, I was waiting
for her, for the kids, for my sister. It was really sad.
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It's just something that
you just can't believe it. NARRATOR: Ron's
new bride, Sue Yen,
00:07:59
was a Nicaraguan citizen
living in Las Vegas. Ron said he met
her a year earlier.
00:08:05
MARK RENNER: He was living
two separate lives-- the life with his wife and children
at George Air Force Base,
00:08:11
and the life with
his new love interest at Nellis Air Force Base. And he was on temporary duty
assignment quite regularly.
00:08:21
-Interesting to note that
Sue Yen told us that she was pregnant with twins, which was
another piece of this puzzle.
00:08:29
NARRATOR: Sue Yen said they
had been engaged for months, and she had given
him an ultimatum.
00:08:35
KELLY MAY0: Sue Yen told Ron
that if you don't marry me this time, in
September, it's over.
00:08:39
Period. I don't want to see you anymore. And Ron really loved her. Very attractive young lady.
00:08:45
NARRATOR: Investigators
discovered that the wedding invitations were mailed
before Vicki's death.
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Sue Yen told police
that she was unaware Ron had been lying to her. -She said that she
knew nothing of this
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and he told her that his--
Vicki had died of brain cancer two years ago in Mexico.
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-We knew Sue Yen had really
nothing to do with this. She was a dupe. -Usually you have a cause of
death and search for a motive,
00:09:10
but now we had a motive. Now we had a motive, really,
in search of a cause of death.
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PAUL TAYLOR: We believe that
Ron Gillette killed Vicki rather than divorce her, because he got
so far in debt for the wedding
00:09:24
that he needed money to pay
off all his debt that he had accrued in buying the wedding
ring, the wedding gown, and all
00:09:30
the wedding invitations
and the honeymoon. He had a life insurance
policy on Vicki
00:09:38
in the amount of $27,000. That would have paid
off all his debt and given him some
money to spare.
00:09:46
NARRATOR: Investigators
now had plenty of circumstantial evidence
to suggest homicide,
00:09:51
but little if any
forensic evidence. Could a second look at
the Gillette's apartment
00:09:59
yield something useful? MARK RENNER: Marrying this
other woman literally days after he buries Vicki-- he
goes to Las Vegas and marries
00:10:14
Sue Yen and brings her back. Brings her back after the
honeymoon to the same home
00:10:21
where Vicki has died
literally two weeks earlier. And you're right. You could not script that
and have it be believable.
00:10:32
NARRATOR: With
behavior like that, investigators reexamined
the circumstances surrounding Vicki
Gillette's death.
00:10:40
Kevin Poorman analyzed
the plastic laundry bag found next to Vicki's body. It was actually a trash bag.
00:10:50
KEVIN POORMAN: The forensic side
of me began to try to assess what can we do with the bag?
00:10:55
What's the potential
value of the bag? Is there any forensic
processing that needs to be done with the bag?
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NARRATOR: Ron Gillette
said he found Vicki in bed with the plastic bag
on or close to her face
00:11:08
as if she had accidentally
rolled onto it and suffocated. To test this theory,
investigators
00:11:15
look for facial oils on
the outside of the bag. Poorman placed the bag
in an airtight chamber
00:11:23
and then introduced
heated super glue, which adheres to any
skin oils present. But he found none.
00:11:33
PAUL TAYLOR: I can't tell
you how disappointed we were when he made
that phone call.
00:11:38
NARRATOR: But when
he got off the phone, Poorman realized he had
made a crucial mistake.
00:11:44
-We realized that the
bag was inside out. That because of the
way it's manufactured,
00:11:50
it's a pleated bag, and
there's a heat seal on one end. When you pull it inside out,
it doesn't lay flat anymore.
00:11:57
NARRATOR: Poorman repeated
the super glue fuming test, and this time he
found something.
00:12:03
-What we saw was
a large oval area that at some point,
something oval and presumably oily was present.
00:12:15
NARRATOR: When he examined
the bag with special lighting, Poorman saw even more.
00:12:21
KEVIN POORMAN: Under
oblique lighting is when I really saw
the facial features, in particular the stretched
impression of the nose
00:12:28
area and the chin area in the
center of this large oval. And I remember thinking
to myself at that point,
00:12:35
I wonder if we're looking at the
death mask of Vicki Gillette. NARRATOR: Poorman searched
the forensic literature,
00:12:45
hoping to find
some way to confirm that this was a
facial impression. But he found nothing.
00:12:53
So he devised a test of his
own with trash bags which were the same brand as
Vicki's laundry bag.
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KEVIN POORMAN: And what we did
was have the volunteer place their face on the bag, and we
pushed from behind their face
00:13:06
into the bag to create face
impressions, looking for not only the actual transfer
of oils to the bag,
00:13:15
but also to see whether there
were any actual stretching that was occurring in the bag itself.
00:13:21
NARRATOR: Poorman used
six different bags, and each time, he increased the
pressure on the subject's face.
00:13:30
After the sixth
test, the volunteer said the pressure
was so great she declined to participate further.
00:13:37
Poorman looked at all
six bags, and only one matched the stretch marks
found on the laundry bag.
00:13:47
It was the last one. The one where the most
pressure had been applied. This test proved that the
image on the laundry bag
00:13:57
was a human face, and was
created by extreme force, not by accidentally
rolling onto it.
00:14:06
-And we got very
excited, because now we had the murder weapon. This was huge. NARRATOR: And a life-sized
photograph of Vicki Gillette
00:14:17
was a perfect match of the
image on the laundry bag. Ron Gillette was arrested and
charged with his wife's murder.
00:14:27
PAUL TAYLOR: Never had a
plastic big with a face print ever been used in any
murder trial ever.
00:14:32
The defense attorney called
it the shroud of Poorman, but we just called it the death
mask, and that was our version.
00:14:40
This is the death mask
of Vicki Gillette. NARRATOR: But prosecutors
wondered whether their trash
00:14:48
bag test would hold up in court. Prosecutors believed that Ron
Gillette decided weeks, if not
00:15:01
months earlier to kill
his wife Vicki in order to marry his Las Vegas
fiancee, Sue Yen.
00:15:08
Ron's telephone calls to Sue
Yen were proof of premeditation. -Beginning in August, he started
calling from his home phone.
00:15:19
This was significant,
because we found out that Vicki paid all the bills. He started calling from
his home phone in August,
00:15:26
because he knew
she was not going to be alive to open up
the bill and pay it. NARRATOR: And investigators
found evidence
00:15:34
that Vicki's kneecaps had
been broken and surgically repaired 18 months
before her death.
00:15:41
Ron admitted during
police questioning that he was the culprit. -Ron said Vicki had
dropped some pretzels,
00:15:48
and I became angry with her
and I pushed her to the floor and broke her kneecaps.
00:15:51
So we have now an admission
of a propensity for violence with his wife, some
domestic abuse,
00:15:56
which is helping us
sew this case up. NARRATOR: Prosecutors say the
night before Vicki's death, Ron
00:16:04
Gillette crushed
14 sleeping pills and put them into Vicki's drink,
believing this would kill her.
00:16:17
Ron set the alarm for 3:00 AM. [alarm] And when he awoke, he
was surprised to find
00:16:27
Vicki still alive. So he decided to suffocate
her with a plastic trash bag. But her face oils
and the impressions
00:16:40
from her nose and chin
were left on the bag. Ron turned the bag inside out,
filled it with clean laundry,
00:16:53
and placed it on the bed to make
her death appear accidental. He then put his three-year-old
son into bed with his dead wife
00:17:06
to further mask the deception. -And in so doing, a
completely heinous act, he leaves the young son in
bed with the dead mother.
00:17:16
The son didn't wake up. By the grace of
God, the son didn't wake up and find
his mother dead.
00:17:22
NARRATOR: 11 days later,
with Vicki out of the way, Ron married his fiancee Sue
Yen, and used Vicki's $27,000
00:17:31
life insurance to
pay for the wedding. KELLY MAY0: What's interesting
is that they had already
00:17:36
sent out wedding invitations
to family members while Vicki was still around. They had ordered the cake,
they had set up the groomsmen
00:17:43
and the tuxedos and the dresses. NARRATOR: At the
trial, the defense claimed Ron was
telling the truth
00:17:50
that Vicki's death
was an accident. Their position was that
the autopsy did not corroborate the
prosecution's theory.
00:17:59
MARK RENNER: Our approach
from the defense standpoint was to show that
there was no homicide.
00:18:07
That Vicki, his first wife, had
died of some kind of natural-- I want to say natural causes,
or at least unexplained causes.
00:18:19
That we were going to admit
that Ron had developed this relationship
with Sue Yen while
00:18:26
on temporary duty assignment
at another Air Force Base, but it was simply happenstance.
00:18:33
NARRATOR: And the defense had
a surprise witness-- a Navy pathologist who
would be testifying
00:18:38
that there was no homicide. but something happened
just before he was to take the stand.
00:18:45
DR. CLARK: I was looking at the
slides, looking at the report, going back and forth.
00:18:52
And suddenly I
said, wait a minute. This case looks exactly like
another one I've seen recently
00:18:57
where a man died because
a car slipped off a jack, landed on his chest, and
kept him from breathing.
00:19:05
NARRATOR: The evidence in that
case were small ruptured blood vessels on the man's lungs.
00:19:12
Dr. Clark reviewed the
autopsy slides and found the same bleeding in
Vicki Gillette's lungs.
00:19:21
DR. CLARK: Seeing
the little areas of bleeding there is indicative
of pressure changes in the lung
00:19:27
that you see when
airflow is obstructed through the nose and mouth. NARRATOR: Dr. Clark
changed his mind.
00:19:35
He now believed Vicki
Gillette had been murdered. He told the defense
about this on the morning
00:19:43
he was set to testify. -It was just like being
hit in the stomach and having all the air
go out of your body.
00:19:52
NARRATOR: The prosecution
called Dr. Clark to the stand, and his findings, along
with the trash bag tests,
00:20:00
convinced the jury. PAUL TAYLOR: If we didn't
have that plastic bag, we were screwed.
00:20:03
We could not prove this
without the plastic bag. We had the murder weapon. I was the key to the
whole damn thing.
00:20:10
NARRATOR: Ron Gillette was found
guilty of first degree murder. He was almost
sentenced to death.
00:20:17
But one juror held out, so he
was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Incredibly, Ron served only
15 years of that sentence
00:20:31
before he was released
for good behavior. He now lives in Las Vegas with
Sue Yen and their children.
00:20:42
-I didn't know.
I didn't know until he was free. I didn't know until he was free.
-Does it anger me?
00:20:47
Yes. Ron deserves to be in jail for
the rest of his natural life. That's where he deserves to be.
00:20:53
He murdered this woman
with callous disregard. He had another life
he wanted to go on to,
00:20:57
so he took the mother
of his children and his wife of some
years and just killed her
00:21:01
because he had
better things to do. [theme music]